A room in Brooklyn with no windows, no AC, and a family of cockroaches! Summer 2010!

Photograph: Lauren Foy

We have mice invading our apartment and we can't seem to get rid of them!

Photograph: Lauren Foy

Currently have a roommate that is obsessed with our bathroom. Constantly in/out of the bathroom. I can barely get 20 mins to get ready for work. Plan to move in a month. Be careful of Craigslist.

Photograph: Lauren Foy

I get home early in the morning and it sounds like someone is kicking my roommate's ass in his room. He comes out covered in what looks like shit. He goes in the bathroom and never comes out. I go check on him and he's laying in the tub covered in this brown shit. It looked like a crime scene.

Photograph: Lauren Foy

The hot water isn't going up to your floor 'coz of gravity...I was on the 4th floor!

Photograph: Lauren Foy

Renovated apt., forgot to seal some holes and an enormous family of mice moved in. Aunts, uncles, cousins, in-laws, grandparents, friends and passerby mice.

Photograph: Lauren Foy

The walls were so thin that when my toddler ran around the room the dog next door would follow him, barking.

Photograph: Lauren Foy

Old man next door, insisted the upstairs neighbors had a gym or whorehouse. He'd yell out the window: This is not a whorehouse

Photograph: Lauren Foy

A squirrel came in my window from the fire escape and chased my cat around the apartment.

Photograph: Lauren Foy

The men across the hall left and never cleaned fridge or put out garbage. Smell bad, bugs everywhere, thought there was a dead body. Broke open door and you can imagine the rest.

Photograph: Lauren Foy

Bugs!

Photograph: Lauren Foy

My subletter moved in two days early, had a naked person sleep in my room, and let her pet rabbit run loose shitting a storm.

Photograph: Lauren Foy

I woke up at 4am one morning to the most bone-chilling moan reverberating throughout the apt. I follow it down to my roommate's room where I find him half-naked chanting in lotus position in front of a poster of Winnie the Pooh.

Photograph: Lauren Foy

The day after the lesbians upstairs kicked out then guy roommate for stealing their drugs and they come over and informed us they had bedbugs. "But don't worry, they crawl up!" (We were beneath them.)

Photograph: Lauren Foy

I answered my door and my landlord was standing there and I wasn't wearing a bra and it was blatantly obvious.

Photograph: Lauren Foy

I came home one day to find police all around my building. Someone was stabbed to death in the stairwell. I would have moved out but the apt was only $600 per month.

Photograph: Lauren Foy

There was a prostitute rendering services in our backyard.

Photograph: Lauren Foy

A club opened 20 feet away from my window the week before finals and the cops wouldn't do anything about it. It literally shook the windows.

Photograph: Lindsay M Taylor

Fighting with my landlord over something stupid and he kept texting me when I was on the phone with my mom.

Photograph: Lindsay M Taylor

I lived with two other friends for a year in an old Howard Johnsons that had been converted. One whole wall was a mirror and two of the beds were bunked. The space was about 150 sq ft. It was awful. Life lesson: stay away from Howard Johnsons, especially if you have two friends with you.

Photograph: Lindsay M Taylor

Landlady came in to my apartment in the middle of the night to repaint the wall.

Photograph: Lindsay M Taylor

Building was still under construction and a wind storm started blowing the building supplies from the scaffolding---on the 23rd floor, I had 2 x 4 planks of wood flying by my windows.

Photograph: Lindsay M Taylor

Fifth floor walk-up in Washington Heights, super pulled a knife on me when I got elected to head the tenants' council.

Photograph: Lindsay M Taylor

Haven Ave. in Washington Heights, water pouring through the ceiling on a daily basis.

Photograph: Lindsay M Taylor

My whole ceiling collapsed in my bathroom seeing rifters.

Photograph: Lindsay M Taylor

I was evacuated from my building in the middle of winter (by force of the FDNY), indefinitely.

Photograph: Lindsay M Taylor

My dining room ceiling caving in in the middle of the night. It was snowing.

Photograph: Lindsay M Taylor

A rat came out of my bathroom when I had company.

Photograph: Lindsay M Taylor

Upstairs neighbor infested my apt. w/ flies---he'd stopped walking his dogs and they were pooping in his apt. I think it was revenge for my asking him not to scrape furniture.

Photograph: Lindsay M Taylor

I've lived in five apartments in six years. A bird got stuck in my fireplace and flew into my apartment. But that wasn't as bad as the roaches and mice on the Upper East Side. Or the various leaks in my ceiling in all apartments. NYC housing is the bane of my existence. But I love it.

Photograph: Lindsay M Taylor

Fire dept. condemned apartment due to no fire escape, kicked out w/no notice, not allowed to removed furniture/belongings

Photograph: Lindsay M Taylor

I lived in an apartment in Staten Island. Construction was steel so whenever our upstairs neighbor walked, we heard loud squeaks! Plus, our neighbor was a huge James Brown fan and played "It's Your Thing" from 5pm to midnight every night.

Photograph: Lindsay M Taylor

My apartment was haunted in Buffalo.

Photograph: Lindsay M Taylor

Toilet overflowing with shit

Photograph: Lindsay M Taylor

Sharing one room with two other people

Photograph: Lindsay M Taylor

No hot water

Photograph: Lindsay M Taylor

I almost broke my landlord's nose after he was refusing to give me a fridge and come knocking [on] my door for rent.

Photograph: Lindsay M Taylor

I lived in an apartment in Prospect Heights with a pervasive roach problem. Found 2 dead cockroaches in m fridge, and numerous ones in cabinets and the kitchen sink. (And this was after exterminators came twice.) The last straw was when I opened the drawer with my forks/spoons and found 3 roaches (one was dead). Gross.

Photograph: Lindsay M Taylor

My roommate's cat caught a mouse in the living room while I was scrapbooking at 2am. When I saw it and screamed, she let the mouse go and it dashed into a corner. I tried to trap it and kill it with windex (I panicked, ok?), but it leapt over the little box and scurried under the door to my roommate's room. I slept with a towel wedged under my door---for a week.

Photograph: Lindsay M Taylor

One month after moving in my bedroom radiator exploded on a calm Saturday morning, that's how I met my neighbor, super and some HOTT FDNY men. Worked out for the best

Photograph: Lindsay M Taylor

My last apt. was a basement with no windows! Totally illegal. It used to flood every time it rained hard. And some things would smell like sewer! Gross!

Photograph: Lindsay M Taylor

I got locked in my apartment for 2 hours---time to get the lock replaced.